What’s in the pipeline for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease?

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common, debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that creates a significant burden for patients, family members and society at large. Major unmet needs include effective therapies that could favorably modify the underlying pathogenetic processes in PD, and better control of motor and nonmotor symptoms in advanced-stage disease. This review examines the current state of development of potential PD therapies, including dopaminergic therapies, modulators of adenosine and glutamate receptors, cell-based therapies, genetic therapies and device-based therapies. In addition, research into potential neuroprotective agents and pipeline therapies for nonmotor symptoms of PD are summarized.

Keywords::

• drug development
• dyskinesia
• nonmotor symptom
• Parkinson’s disease
• pipeline
• therapy
• wearing off

Financial & competing interests disclosure

M Stacy has received honoraria from Allergan, Best Doctors in America, GlaxoSmithKline, LINK Medicine, Novartis, Solvay and UCB, and is a consultant for Boehringer-Ingelheim, Constella, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, Kyowa, Novartis, Osmotica, Synosia and Upsher-Smith Pharmaceuticals. He also serves on Data and Safety Monitoring Boards for Biogen, Boehringer-Ingelhiem and Neurologix. DB Sommer has no financial or competing interests to declare. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.